Over ten years ago I took historian Eric Rauchway's upper-division course on the Gilded Age and Progressive Era as an undergraduate at UC Davis. We read Rauchway's Murdering McKinley and even had to write an essay on it. A prolific author, Rauchway is out with another book on FDR and John Maynard Keynes, which is reviewed here by Robert Brent Toplin for HNN. Among other insights, Rauchway points to the significance of FDR getting the United States off the gold standard in 1933, which kickstarted the recovery. Indeed, I wrote about similar themes for my article in HNN on the FED. If you're looking for scholarly treatment of the pitfalls of the gold standard, check out Barry Eichengreen, Liaquat Ahamed, and Ken Mouré. Gold, unfortunately, maintains a loyal following because of libertarian non-sense, the mythology that our money must be "backed" by something supposedly "durable," and the lucrative funding and advertising of rich billionaires, who desire a monetary system of "limited" government and one that checks inflation to the point that deflation is very likely. Sticking to the presumably self-equilibrating gold standard kept western, industrialized countries mired in devastating debt-default spirals and crippling deflation. Check out some of the graphs I present in lecture here. It was only when FDR abandoned the gold standard that currency devaluation and fiscal stimulus in the form of New Deal work relief programs like the WPA could proceed. How many mainstream academic economists will you find advocating a return to gold? A big fat zero. It's a bad idea on multiple levels. Keynes was right to call it a "barbarous relic" and even Milton Friedman, the hero of the right, recognized the problems with the gold standard. But that won't stop the Troglodytes following Ted Cruz.

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Disclaimer: This is my personal blog. While I do my best to offer reasonable conclusions based on verifiable, peer reviewed evidence, I neither speak for my employers, nor do I require my students to read or agree with the thoughts expressed here. Opinions are my own.